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Posts tagged with “self-worth”

When People Judge: Why It’s Not Really About You

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“Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.” ~Nancy Lopez

You and I, we judge others. And they judge us. We all do it. Sometimes we judge with positive or non-harming intentions.

Unfortunately, our judgment often comes from a negative place, with darker intent.

Why Do We Judge?

Though we judge for many reasons, we often do it when:

  • We don’t know a person well (yet)
  • We cannot identify with
…

We All Deserve to Receive What We Need (and It’s Not Selfish)

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“We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving…Accepting another person’s gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.” ~Alexander McCall Smith

We all know the importance of giving. In fact, it feels rather nice to give to others; we have all experienced that warm glow in the stomach when we do something thoughtful for another person or exchange kind words. To make someone smile is one of the best feelings in the world.

But sometimes, do we get so caught up in …

How to Stop Tying Your Worth to Things Outside Yourself

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“If you find yourself constantly trying to prove your worth to someone, you have already forgotten your value.” ~Unknown

There’s nothing like being one of the few black kids in your school to make you feel like the odd person out.

Well, that was my experience, anyway. I appreciate my parents’ desire to provide my brother and me with a safe neighborhood to live in and a good education, but growing up in a predominantly white area really affected me. I very rarely felt like I fit in among my peers.

That didn’t stop me from trying, though. I did …

Addicted to Approval: Reclaim Your Self-Esteem

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“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

The past few years have been full of hard but necessary lessons that I needed to learn about my relationships with others—their limits, boundaries, what healthy relationships are and are not.

I realized that the foundation for some of my relationships (the unhealthy ones) was my need for attention and approval. This, of course, was futile, because we can only truly feel good about ourselves despite outside opinions.

Because I felt inadequate and overly self-critical due …

Change Your Life by Changing Your Mind About Yourself

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“The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.” ~Sonya Friedman

I’d had enough.

Once again, I’d sent follow-up emails to guys who had shown interest in my dating site profile. Once again, I’d included full-length photos with those emails, unlike the headshot that went along with my online profile.

And once again, days later, my inbox was a virtual ghost town.

Didn’t these guys know how much courage it took for me to set up a profile in the first place? I was twenty-six years old and been on fewer than a dozen dates in my life—including my …

How to Heal From Rejection: 5 Steps to Soothe the Pain

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“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

I spent years training as a psychologist, waiting for the day I would graduate and finally have time to explore my second passion—writing.

When I opened a private practice I left my mornings free, and over the next fourteen years I wrote six screenplays, two novels, and a children’s book. But mostly I wrote letters, thousands of them, to agents, editors, and producers, asking them to read my work.

They rejected every manuscript I sent them.

After fourteen years of rejection, my mood, my confidence, my motivation, and …

Your Reality Is a Reflection of What You Believe You Deserve

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“You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.” ~Yogi Bhajan

Over the last ten years I have learned time and time again that our reality is a reflection of what we believe we deserve, often on an unconscious level.

I discovered this about a decade ago while living in Belize—a diving vacation hotspot on one end and gang-infested, poverty-ridden land on the other.

Back then I was avoiding the 9-5 life. You may say I was running from something, such as routine and following the status quo, but I was also looking to find my worth by …